Canada terror suspect’s radical turn worried father

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Raed Jaser appeared in court Tuesday after being arrested Monday in connection with a plot to derail a passenger train between Montreal and New York City.

By Rob Gillies
Associated Press
April 25, 2013

TORONTO — One of two men accused of plotting with Al Qaeda members in Iran to derail a train in Canada became radicalized to the point that his father reached out to a Muslim support group for help and advice, a local religious leader said Wednesday.

Muhammad Robert Heft, president of the Paradise Forever Support Group Inc., a nonprofit organization that provides support to Muslims in Canada, said Mohammad Jaser came to him several times citing concerns about his son’s radicalization.

‘‘He came to me about his son, saying how concerned he was getting about the rigidness of his son and his interpretation of Islam,’’ Heft said. “He was becoming self-righteous, becoming pushy, pushing his views on how much they should be practicing as Muslims.’’

Jaser’s son, Raed, 35, has been charged along with Chiheb Esseghaier, 30 with conspiring to carry out an attack and murder people in association with a terrorist group in their plot to derail a train that runs between New York City and Montreal.

On Wednesday, the other suspect appeared briefly in court, where he made a statement suggesting he did not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.

‘‘This criminal code is not a holy book,’’ Esseghaier said at the hearing. ‘‘We cannot rely on the conclusions taken out from these judgments.’’

At the hearing Esseghaier rejected the allegations against him and declined to be represented by a court-appointed lawyer.

Jaser had appeared in court Tuesday and did not enter a plea. The court granted a request by his lawyer, John Norris, for a publication ban on future evidence and testimony.

Both men were ordered to return to court May 23.

‘‘We are waiting for the disclosure, and we will be defending against the charges,’’ Norris said in a telephone interview on Wednesday.

Norris declined to comment when asked if he wanted his client’s case separated from Esseghaier’s.

Police, tipped off by an imam worried by the behavior of one of the suspects, said it was the first known attack planned by Al Qaeda in Canada. If convicted, the defendants could be sentenced to life in prison.

The case has raised questions about the extent of Shi’ite-led Iran’s relationship with Al Qaeda, a predominantly Sunni Arab terrorist network. It also renewed attention on Iran’s complicated history with the terror group, which ranges from outright hostility to alliances of convenience and even overtures by Tehran to assist Washington after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Canadian police said this week they did not think it was a case of state sponsored terrorism.

Law officials in New York with knowledge of the investigation said the attack was to take place on the Canadian side of the border. They are not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Norris has questioned the timing of the arrests, pointing to ongoing debates in the Canadian Parliament over a new antiterrorism law that would expand the powers of police and intelligence agencies.

Norris has noted Jaser was a permanent resident of Canada who has lived there for 20 years. Norris refused to say where Jaser was from, saying that revealing his nationality in the current climate amounted to demonizing him.

Canadian police have declined to release the men’s nationalities, saying only they had been in Canada a ‘‘significant amount of time.’’ But the London-based newspaper Al Arab reported Wednesday, citing unnamed sources, that Jaser is a Jordanian passport holder with full name Raed Jaser Ibrahim Amouri, who had visited the United Arab Emirates several times, most recently in September 2011. The newspaper reported that the suspect also visited Qatar and Saudi Arabia. It was not possible to independently confirm the report.

Esseghaier, in a profile on a university department website, which has since been removed, says he was born in Tunis, Tunisia.

The investigation surrounding the planned attack was part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Canadian police said the men never got close to carrying out the attack.

The warning first came from an imam in Toronto, who in turn was tipped off by suspicious behavior on the part of one of the suspect.

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